Now And At The Hour Of Our Death: A Spaldling O'Connor Novel, #1

PREFACE

the story of Spalding O’Connor’s distant cousin.

Born at Winchester of a gentleman’s family and brought up a Protestant, blessed James Byrd became a Catholic and went to study at Rheims. On his return, he was apprehended and charged with being reconciled to the Roman Church and maintaining the Pope under Christ to be head of the Church. Brought to the bar, he acknowledged the indictment and received sentence of death for high treason, though both life and liberty were offered to him if he would, but once, go to a Protestant church. When his father solicited him to save his life by complying, he modestly answered that, as he had always been obedient to him, so he would obey him now, could he do so with out offending God.

After a long imprisonment, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Winchester, March 25, 1593 in the reign of good Queen Elizabeth. He suffered with wonderful constancy and cheerfulness, being but 19 years old. His head was set upon a pole upon one of the gates of the city. His father, one day passing by, cried out, Oh Jimmy, my son, ...how far from thy heart was all treason or other wickedness. Bowden’s Momentoes of the Martyrs and Confessors.

CHAPTER 1

The Dog

For no reason he was aware of, even years later when his mind would drift to that decisive instant, Spalding throws up his left arm and ducks as if eluding a punch. A huge dog comes boiling over a low hedge and tumbling down on him with unearthly gravity. A cannonball of fur and muscle. Like a combination of pit bull and wolfhound it is squat, massive and covered with curly hair. The dog’s momentum pushes Spalding in the same direction as he is jogging and he goes down like a flipped bottle cap. The Spyderco folding knife he carries in his right hand skids along he ground under his palm as Spalding instinctively opens his hand to break his fall. It protects his hand for an instant, between palm and gravel, and then skids away as Spalding tries to roll up onto his feet. His compact, lethal folding knife is transformed into a lost piece of flat, stainless steel with a curious thumb-hole in less than a second by the surprise attack.

The muscular beast keeps Spalding off his feet and off balance as rolls in the dirt and struggles to right himself and protect his throat. He scoots to his knees with his right hand pushing hard on the road, pushing him up but the dog’s head and shoulders crash into him as if they are made of lead. Spalding rolls away, unable to best the dog in a blocking contest, never able to get his feet solidly under him as the dog presses forward.

Spalding rolls on his shoulders; he keeps his hands up in boxing position to protect his throat, kicking instinctively at the sound and feel of the dog he cannot see as he rolls. His feet catch the beast in the underbelly, raking its genitals and causing its low rutting growl to rise briefly in pitch. His other foot hits low on a back leg, which skids away without damage.

The dog lunges at Spalding’s throat and his left fist pops into the dog’s chest, pushing back against the dog’s chest. The hand that held the knife braces against the ground to stop the dog’s advance, but the dog is stronger and Spalding gives up a foot of ground. His right hand lifts, slides and comes down on a short piece of dried wood. It is tubular, about six inches long and an inch thick. A tree branch cutting, old, barkless and hard which has made its way to the edge of the road and under Spalding’s hand. His hand curls around it so it protrudes an inch above and below his fist.

Spalding’s vision shrinks until he sees only the enormous head of the dog in focus. Its lips are retracted so white fangs and pink and purple gums grow out of its mouth. It looks like a sharks mouth. All awareness of the sounds and smells of the world around him recedes as his reptilian brain takes command and there is nothing in his world but fight - flight is not possible.

The dog juts its bared fangs at Spalding’s throat as Spalding again gets his knees under him and tries to hit the dog with an elbow strike under its jaw. The dog is quicker and leans its head back. The vicious elbow chop grazes its jaw, and then, snakelike, the dog sinks its fangs into Spalding’s arm, which protects his face as if he is hugging himself with his left arm. The dog’s mouth covers Spalding’s forearm from the elbow halfway to the wrist.

Pain shoots from Spalding’s elbow to the back of his hand and back up his arm to his left ear. A spider web of saliva flies into Spalding’s face, the stink of hot breath envelopes him and viscous beads of clear saliva swing from the dog’s lower jaw. The dog sets its legs and begins jerking backward on Spalding’s arm pulling him off balance. The saliva colors red.

Spalding tries to hook the dog with his right, but the dog works its head like a duck, jerking back and forth and Spalding needs his balled right fist as a brace to keep himself from being pulled onto his stomach and dragged. He instinctively brings his feet forward like a gymnast sitting on a mat; and, from his first solidly planted position since the dog hit him about four seconds ago, he hooks the dog hard with his right. Hooks again and again with the pointed end of the hard stick clenched in his fist. His fist crashes into the ball of muscle in the dog’s jaw, gouging out meat and blood. With each blow, new flames of pain lick up his arm causing the muscles to spasm, pulling his head and left shoulder together as if an electric shock is contracting his trapezius.

He can feel meat tearing in his left arm and blood splatters the ground each time his fist connects. Faster than conscious thought, he knows he has to get the dog up in the air. As the dog locks on his arm and tries to shake it like a rat, Spalding kicks again at the dog’s genitals lifting the dog’s hindquarters a foot off the ground. The dog’s jaws remain locked on his forearm. The dog shuffles its forelegs in a sidestep to keep its balance as Spalding’s foot keeps its hindquarters off the ground, and Spalding drops his right hand, the blood-tipped stick falling away, and grabs the dog’s left foreleg.

Using every ounce of the power his pull ups and heavy bag work has given him and doubled by the adrenaline surge of desperation, pain and anger, he hops to his feet and in a flash of inspiration he runs at the dog. Straight at the jaws. This surprises the beast, which quits tugging his arm, splays its feet, tries to twist to the side, and sits down. Spalding’s heart leaps up, and then his body follows dragging the hundred pounds of grunting muscle and bone and teeth up on its hind legs.

For an instant, they appear as a dancing couple, the dog on hind legs facing Spalding, who holds the dog’s paw in one hand and has the massive head clamped on the other forearm. The smell of dusty fur, muscle and testosterone rises into his face like a fog. Spalding grips the muscular foreleg as if it’s a cobra’s head and rips it down and around as if he is churning the crank of a Model T.

But the dog’s strength is feral-out of proportion to its size- and the dog adjusts its grip on Spalding’s forearm and new pain assails him. Creeping into his consciousness is the realization that he is in combat with his pain as well as with the black dog. He tries to push the beast’s jaws away with his left and attempts to rip the paw off with his right. His left arm will not respond. Spalding realizes his own teeth are bared and a guttural unnnhuuuugh is roaring from deep in his chest, and he rips the paw upward and tries to knock the dog out with it’s own paw. He feels something give way in the foreleg and a slackening of the massive strength pushing back at him.

The dog releases it’s grip on Spalding’s left forearm, which he holds like a bloody crab claw, and its jaws strike like a snake, closing over Spalding’s right hand and wrist and the dog’s own mangled paw. Spalding feels something break in the back of his hand as a hot poker shoots up his fingers and back to his elbow. He thinks nothing and feels nothing but the blinding pain as if someone closed a car door on his hand. The pain would take away all thought if he had any.

Spalding raises his right fist with dog attached and stamps the dog’s hind foot. As the dog loosens its grip on his hand and its own paw, Spalding does a fast shuffle-step and stamps his right foot down again, but higher this time, and catches the dog just above the knee and Spalding feels something snap beneath his foot. The dog’s weight shifts, twisting Spalding’s arm and it screams a dog-scream above its snarl, but still does not release the murderous grip on Spalding’s right hand.

Spalding staggers to his right with the dog as it lists, does another shuffle-step and stamps at the dogs right foot with his right. It bounces ineffectively off the dog’s inner thigh as both dog and man snuff air into their noses and growls are torn from their chests. Spalding reaches back to his Shotokan karate training of 30 years ago, to the side stamp kick, which he still practiced–one of the few kicks he found to be of any use in a real fight.

It was very short and quick, mostly down, contained and balanced and very close to the natural motion of stamping on a bug or a mouse. He quickly shifts his weight onto his back foot, bringing his left foot up about a foot and a half and stamping down from his hip, rotating his leg and locking it as the outside of his heel flashes down and catches the dog’s hind leg at the ankle on the inside, following through, dislocating the rear paw at the ankle and jamming his heel into the ground sending a shock back up to his hamstring.

The beast’s leg gives way, it’s entire weight pulling Spalding forward. The beast’s yelp and Spalding’s yell of pain join as the dog rotates on ruined hind legs and falls between Spalding’s legs. For split second, he stares into the dog’s black eyes a foot away staring back at him upside down. Pain burns up his right arm and into his jaw as his arm is twisted by the black and brown ham-face that swings from it determined to eat its way up the arm to his throat.

Panic now rises in Spalding’s throat, as the realization of his two useless arms pushes at the edges of his consciousness. He steps around the dog, whose bull neck is banging against Spalding’s testicles and flips the dog on his back. The dog sticks out it’s one good foreleg and fights to stay sitting, but Spalding kicks it again and again screaming in rage and pain as each kick ricochets pain up his right arm, which protrudes from the dog’s bloody mouth.

For the first time since the hound hit him, Spalding becomes the attacker. Rage pushes past fear and a surge of cool electricity raises goose bumps across his back and raises the hair on the back of his neck. He stands over the hound, his left arm flopping uselessly, his right hand still in the crushing jaws, and knows he will win. He stamps the dog’s belly with his right foot, and as the dog turns his head side to side, it is losing power and speed. Spalding stamps again and again on the belly and testicles of the writhing dog.

As the dog rolls onto his side Spalding lifts both feet, drops his right knee and genuflects his 200 pounds on the dog’s rib cage. The dog’s muscles flex, the ribs move and the furry body slides out from under Spalding’s knee. He bobs up and down again and again and again and suddenly, he feels something give way. It turns mushy. He bobs up and down, bounce, bounce, bounce and feels bone grind under his knee.

Bright red blood sprays from the dog’s nose and dark purplish blood oozes from it’s jaws and covers his neck. Still, the dog keeps its grip on Spalding’s right hand and wrist. It no longer rips it’s head side-to-side and it’s ferocious jaw strength is receding. The Hell Hound no longer crushes bone and gristle, but still retains the power to keep it’s jaws locked. Spalding reaches with his left hand to stick his thumb and forefinger into the beast eyes and pry his head back. Again, his left arm dangles uselessly, and his left hand slaps limply at the dog’s face as if the arm were rubber and had no bone. He rocks to his left and moves his right knee over the dog’s throat and crushes down with all his weight on his right knee compressing the dogs muscular throat.

His right hand is now nearly numb, feeling hot and swollen in the bloody drool that covers the dog’s mouth. The dogs muscular neck resists and the bag of muscle and fur wriggles and spasms under Spalding’s leg. Spalding rocks left and right lifting his right knee a few inches and then jamming down as hard as he can. He hears the flecking sound of air being sucked through blood, hears the dogs breathing become irregular and labored, feels suddenly exhausted and then as the dog exhales and snuffs blood, but this time too weak to send a spray into Spalding’s face, he feels the pressure on his right hand slacken, and he leans back and falls away from the dog onto his back.

The sense of relief and rest is like a narcotic and he nearly passes out on his back. Then he breathes in and chokes and tastes the cloying, coppery taste of blood. He realizes that his right hand is thrown over his face and his own blood is leaking into his mouth. He curls into a sitting position, gets his right leg under him, raises into genuflecting position, topples back into a sitting position, does it all again and succeeds in gaining a wobbly stance with his right hand raised as if to wave hello and his left elbow bent; flopping in front of his belly dripping blood on the ground. It’s over, he thinks. It’s over. It’s over, repeating in his head. It’s over.

He moves woodenly toward the house, the white house with a brick patio in back. Two blackbirds walk across his path, jabbing their heads in and out with each step. His legs begin to feel very heavy and his head feels thick. He steps up the two steps to the patio and notices the red brick surface is very clean. Very clean. Vividly clean. The door is white and has glass panels, six panes. He backs up to the door and taps the back of his head on the glass panes. Don’t break them he thinks. He hears birds chirping and a locust’s accelerating buzz, like a loud wheel gathering speed. He notices the light getting dim.

The door opens on the chain behind him. He turns and speaks into the dark crack between the door and the jam, call... an... ambulance. The joints of his legs where they join his pelvis in front begin to feel numb like when you hit your crazy bone. He slides down the wall and sits on the patio.

The bird’s song and locusts’ hum and the whirr of distant traffic merge into a steady soft buzz in his head as if his ears are stuffed with cotton. The cool patio beckons to him and he lies down on his right side. Brick feels cool against his cheek. He feels cool wetness between his legs. Dark, it is getting dark. It feels good to rest. His arms and hands hurt. The light rushes down a drain hole in the earth and his vision contracts to a small bright disk. What kind of name, he thought, was Polycarp? Then darkness.

Six months earlier…

Father Polycarp stood in a crush of bodies on the Metro at rush hour, heading toward the gray stone fortresses of Catholic University and its satellites. The buildings reminded him of Notre Dame’s campus, several hundred miles west.

At Falls Church East, a young girl pushed in and grabbed the pole beside him. Her thick, lustrous black hair, raven-like, startled him with its vitality as it floated a foot below his eyes. She displayed her raven plumage-shiny black leather jacket open over body hugging black knit top and black denims rooted in black boots. Most young people on the Metro were likewise plumed for display, unlike the scruffy students he faced back home. The young Raven turned and took an empty seat, perching awkwardly on the edge as her backpack filled the seat behind her.

The Metro was silent except for the electric hum of the motors and the rustling of newspapers. He read snatches of headlines in the Washington Post good Samaritan murdered in Northwest…, Clinton says scandal was distraction…, Arafat condemns…, New Audi is first sedan…, and then the words disappeared around the fold of the newspaper. No one talked as they sped along Route 66 toward Metro Center. He noticed there was more chatter on the ride home at six, especially if students were aboard. Girls talking about their boyfriends were the least inhibited.

Soon he’ll ease into the old years, full of sleep; sleep in the day and can’t sleep at night, he laughed to himself. He’s just been up an hour and a half and sleepy already. Where was it he heard laughter is a human response to the irrationality of the world around us? He laughed again, it was so true. Father Polycarp was amused and resigned; benevolence curled the corners of his mouth and crinkled his eyes.

The faith welled up and warmed him; enabled him to relax and feel God must know what he’s doing, must be in control. I am certainly not, he smiled to himself. The depressing greed of adults, the brutal insolence of youth–young, dumb and full of cum–filled him with bemusement and affection more often than anger. How could God invent such a flawed instrument? It must be His fault. Faith. He hadn’t ever figured that out, any of it. Still a mystery. But faith made it amusing rather than terrible.

His young students, the thoughtful ones, always seemed to expect him to be wise because he was old. What wisdom can you pass along? They ask. He wished he had something. He was in his mid-sixties, and naturally the young expected him to be wise. He remembered asking his own Granddad Clare the same thing. Ahhh his granddad had sighed, looking down at the floor. I have no wisdom, I wish I did. Just a lot of years. His granddad’s watery blue eyes held his own a second and then looked away.

He remembered standing still and feeling as if his own weight had increased. He knew his granddad was telling the truth and it shocked him gently like a tranquilizer dart. Granddad Clare looked both old and childlike in his vulnerability. He had passed a truth that saddened both of them. Father Polycarp was eighteen; his grandfather was eighty, standing on the edge of eternity, and he seemed depressed. He had always impressed Father Polycarp as a man of faith and intelligence. Heaven awaits, no need to fear death. And now his grandfather was telling him that age, intelligence and faith weren’t enough. The boy had seen his granddad letting his guard down and revealing an interior bleakness and it shocked him.

Next stop Brookland and Catholic University said the soothing intercom voice. Father Polycarp, who had been baptized Dennis Charles Clare, returned from his reverie and begin maneuvering toward the nearest door of the Metro car. A metal plaque proclaimed the comfortable, quiet, stainless-steel car carrying 100 people was made in Italy. Over here, he thought, we think of Italy as food and La Dolce Vita in sunny countrysides. We forget about their industry. I guess they’ve still got it.

He stepped onto the open-air platform dragging his rolling suitcase behind him. No matter how many riders were aboard, the height of the metro car’s floor exactly matched the level of the station floor. No tripping, and one could ride in and out in a wheelchair. Pretty clever, those Italians. He saw a sea of brick row houses and warehouses stretching away. A subtle sense of menace washed over him as he looked back over Rhode Island and Florida avenues. Years ago, must have been the late eighties, on a steamy evening he picked up an elderly black woman who was hitchhiking. A hard rain had just started, it was nearly dark and her plight caused him to pull the car over.

Where are you going? He asked.

I live in Trinidad, just off Florida Avenue. I’ll show ya she said as she got in and closed the car door.

He reversed directions. It would be several miles out of his way. The woman was petite and Father Polycarp guessed her age at seventy. She was sipping from a tall metal tumbler and he could smell a whiff of alcohol and sugar. She held the tumbler toward him and asked you want a drink?

No thanks.

After heading northwest on Florida Ave. in silence for a couple minutes, she said, go two more streets and then turn right. I’m stayin’ with my daughter. He turned north on Trinidad Ave. NE and then right on Queen Street at her direction. As he slowed to turn left into an alley, he heard the thumping of a boom box and saw a circle of young people moving and pulsating. They were orbiting around a pastel blue Volkswagen Beetle which rested upside down and was slowly spinning on its roof. Some of the kids were doing a Maypole dance and holding onto the car so it rotated with them as they danced around it.

Go on pass them. I’m up there. She pointed with her drink hand, indicating a right turn into a broad alley crossing theirs 30 yards ahead. He slowly squeezed by the rotating kids and car. Graffiti symbols were sprayed in black paint on the white wall of the house to their right. He pulled to within a foot of the wall to pass the kids and read Eye-Eye and 3rd and other indecipherable symbols.

By that black truck, she said, again lifting her drink toward a Chevy Tahoe in the driveway three houses ahead on the right. He stopped the car. Is this it?

Yeah. Hey, can you give me some money?

What?

How ‘bout a twenty?

No, I’m not giving you money. I just brought you home. I should be asking you for money. Am I right?

Come on.

As she got out and closed the door he thought we’re all God’s children, and we’re all dangerous. Or, maybe its just that we don’t know which ones are. Dangerous.

Most of Catholic University and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception were blocked from view by the Metro station’s walls and roof, and Father Polycarp descended into the station’s interior and fed his ticket into the reader, which snatched it with a brisk snapping sound, like a card pulled from the deck.

The turnstile opened and he popped out, wheeled right on Monroe Street and headed toward his guest room at the Franciscan Friary on 14th St. The area around NE Monroe Street and 14th Street felt comfortable. This was a black neighborhood of well-tended houses with trees and flowers in the warm weather and no trash in the streets. It had sidewalks which heaved up in places as tree roots ran under them. A sprinkling of white families was integrating this Brookland neighborhood.

Hello he said into his cell phone.

Father Polycarp, this is Joe. Where are you?

I’m just entering the Franciscan Monastery. I stayed with friends in Vienna last night and caught the Metro in.

Good. I’m still about five hours out. What if I call you when I’m settled in and we can get together for some chow at Colonel Brooks Tavern?

Yes. I’m for it. What time do you guess?

I think I’ll be settled in by four or so. Did you bring any climbing gear?

No, I flew into Dulles. Nothing but my tennis racket this time.

That sounds good. Maybe between walking and jogging we can do something every day even if we can’t get a court. Well, I’ll call you around four then.

Okay Joe. Be safe and Godspeed. Father Polycarp put his cell phone in his pocket and rang the bell at the Franciscan Friary.

CHAPTER 2

In Hospital

I wake in a hospital bed with no one around. Everything soft and fuzzy. Arms bandaged and an IV drip feeding my right elbow. Another bed to my right, behind a partially closed curtain. It is empty. Across the hallway somewhere, I hear TV noise rising and falling. I have vague memories of being loaded into an ambulance and drifting through am emergency room. Where am I ? I go back to sleep.

Serene, soft twilight flows through my window when Father Ben’s voice in the hallway awakens me.

He’s been sleeping peacefully the last 24 hours. Vital signs are good says a female voice.

That sounds like him. He always could sleep well, says Father Ben as he follows Tenisha Williams-Shaw into my room.

Hi Father. I recognize my oldest uncle. Where are we?

Spalding. Praise God. They say you’re doing well. How do you feel?

I move my head. It seems as though someone has put cotton in my ears. I feel good. Sleepy.

Father, he won’t feel so good tomorrow when we take that morphine out of his drip some. Let him sleep if he wants, said Tenisha.

I open my eyes again and it’s dark outside. Father Ben Ryan is saying the Rosary softly. I miss a few words, then my brain catches up and I hear, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. The voice pauses just a beat then starts Hail Mary, full of grace...

I close my eyes and am back in my parent’s living room in Morgantown, West Virginia decades earlier. We lived in Suncrest Flats, a prehistoric lake bed surrounded by low hills for 100 miles to the North, South and West. A dozen miles East, the first ridge of Appalachian Highlands rose like a breaker and ran hundreds of miles north and south. The ridges marched east in parallel like waves building toward the beach of the Virginia border where they broke and ran toward the Atlantic.

I knelt with my arms propped on the sofa. The seven others knelt beside me or at chairs intoning our mantra Hail Mary, full of grace... An outsider might have taken our soothing, repetitive droning for a Buddhist chant. My mind floated freely to the end of its tether, which was the rising and falling rhythm of the Hail Mary.

Again, I open my eyes and it is still dark. Father Ben is reading a small black leather book. Probably the Divine Office I think and go back to sleep.

When I wake, I have to pee. Father Ben is gone, and the curtains are pulled to shield the other bed. Look at these goddamn arms. My hands are wrapped like pillows. My left arm is taped from fingertip to elbow and in a sling. My right has a metal splint extending above the wrist.

I slowly sit up and put my bare feet on the cold tile floor. I try to stand. I lean forward because I can’t push up with my hands. I am sore everywhere. My hands and arms hurt. I rock back and forth till I get enough momentum to stand. I get to my feet on the third rock. I remember the dog and have flashes of a doctor in the ER asking me what happened.

Using my right forearm and foot, I push the IV stand into the bathroom. My hospital gown is untied, so it drapes over my knees as I sit down to pee. It feels good to sit down. I am tired from the twenty foot walk to the toilet. I jerk my head and realize I had nodded off while on the toilet. I rise by rocking forward and begin the tiring return trip. TV noise is coming from the monitor near the other bed. An elderly man, small, dark-skinned with silver hair is visible behind the rumpled curtain watching golf.

I ease into bed and go to sleep again. The sleep feels so good, I think I could do it a long time. I wake to a nurse’s aide washing me, and now the arm and hand are bags of pain hanging off the front of my body. I am in a drowsy transition back to sleep when I hear nurse Tenisha’s voice.

Mr. O’Connor, I brought you some visitors. Tenisha was slim, dark and graceful. Although only about five-six, she has the long legs and arms on a short torso particular to some African Americans. Tommy Hit Man Hearns was the ultimate example, with arms and legs so long for his body that he looked spider-like. Tenisha just looks good, slim-hipped, wasp-waisted, petite but strong. Her movements were sometimes quick, sometimes slow but always smooth. I imagine her legs striding easily in a running gait where she barely touches the ground.

Tenisha steps aside, back to the wall, and two people with police uniforms walk past her.

Mr. O’Connor, are you feeling well enough to talk?

I stare blankly for two beats, then say Sure.

I’m Sergeant Lewis with the Notre Dame Campus Police.

He is black with light skin, a short, compact build and short grey hair. Ex-Marine, I think.

This is Corporal Stanski.

She is also light skinned, but fuller-bodied and softer. Not ex-marine, I think. She has a strong jawline and a squarish face, with light grey eyes, framed by very short relaxed curls, like greaseless Jerri-Curls. She has broad shoulders, a big-boned frame but packed with well-proportioned female flesh.

Hi she says. They carried their hats under their arms and wore black, semi-automatic pistols high on their hips.

We came to talk to you about the dog.

Is it dead?

Yes. It was dead when we arrived. Did you kill it?

I hope to God I did. It was trying to kill me. Look at these arms.

Mr. O’Connor, tell us what happened the night you were brought to the hospital.

You know, I haven’t gotten to ask a doctor about my arm yet.

Well, you can, uh, you should be able to do that right after you talk to us.

So, I tell them. My mind doesn’t work right and I feel like I’m describing a dream from the inside. Things don’t sound right, but I don’t care. Drugs are filling me with warm cotton balls.

He sits and she stands with one foot propped on the side of my bed as I tell them how I was jogging on the far edge of Notre Dame Campus -at least I thought it was still on campus, on West North Shore Drive on the far side of the lakes. I was running near the end of the Drive where the road is wooded on both sides and I saw this ball of fur and teeth leaping for my throat and I threw up my left arm just in time. I remembered this low, guttural growl. Was it right after the dog struck? Not sure. My arm had begun to throb as I relived the attack.

Then I am raising my head. It had somehow gotten too heavy. Are you back with us says the female.

Huh?

Id never seen anyone sleep with their eyes open before. It was the male talking.

What?

Ever seen the dog before?

No.

Know anyone with a dog like that?

No.

Did anybody see it happen?

I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone nearby. But, uh, once the dog hit, I couldn’t see anything except the dog. Or, hear anything.

Did you see anyone with a dog, like walking a dog?

"I can’t remember, you know, I mean my head is fuzzy. But, but I don’t think so. I think it